WCOC local meet at Five Ponds in Litchfield. An inch or two of fresh snow, snowing lightly, about 30F. Guess it was cold enough that my brain didn't wake up for a while.
Executive summary -- lost my map twice, lost my hat about 5 times before I gave up and stuffed it in my pants, lost my contact lens once, lost my way a couple of times, felt old and slow, and my butt hurt the whole time. On the plus side, had a good laugh when I finished and Jim Handerson asked, with some feigned concern, if a certain part of me had stayed warm enough (see yesterday's entry). It had. So on balance a fine day.
My
routes.
Obviously I shouldn't have gone, but since it may be quite a while before I get to go orienteering again, and there will be plenty of time to rest my aching butt, I figured why not. Had a nice drive down with Phil, and a long discussion about the finances of the UMass philosophy department in this age of sudden budget cuts made the time go quickly. Got my stuff together and jogged over to the start and got going right away, didn't want to stand around and get cold.
1. I had my spikes on so I felt confident regarding the footing in the snow, but within 50 meters in the woods I had already crashed badly, really hard, bloodied my right shin. I think I was more careful after that.
2. Was lost pretty quickly, not really badly lost but didn't know quite where I was. Turned out I was in the dark green, just a bunch of saplings. Got through that, over to the area of the control, saw it, took a look at my map to see which way to #3, except I didn't have my map. Seriously. Looked behind me, spotting the map on the snow was no trivial matter, and it was nowhere in sight. Headed back, trying to remember exactly how I'd come. A couple of other people had been in the same area, and at one point I was checking the footprints to see if they were mine (i.e. if both feet pointed right). After a bit found the map back about 50-60 meters back. Feeling stupid? Oh, yeah.
3. No problems!
4. Moving nicely, over to the area of the control, didn't see it, looked up the hill a little, then back down, then saw it a little farther from the stream than I expected.
5. No problems.
6. Lost my hat for 3rd/4th/5th(?) time, decided I'd had enough of that and tucked it in my pants. Lost my map for the second time, but this time only got about 20 meters. Did spike the control.
7. Took a while to get out to the main trail, then past the start and an inefficient route to the control (should have turned in sooner). By this point I was feeling rather negative about my run so far.
8. So just to make things worse, I caught a branch in my right eye (the one I wear a contact in for distance vision), it hit pretty hard, hurt. Looked off in the distance to see if I could still see, and things looked blurry. Not good. Looked at the map and things looked sharp. Also not good. The contact was clearly gone, and the impact had been sharp enough that I was pretty sure the contact hadn't just been pushed off-center. Hmmm. Time to go in? And then while I was looking at the map I saw a little imperfection on the map case, and I looked a little closer and it was my contact, folded in half and just stuck there. So I took off a glove and peeled off the contact and after a bit got it unfolded and then put it in the usual position at the end of the index finger and then, there being no mirror handy, just aimed for my eye. Didn't work, the lens ended up wrapped around the end of my finger. Tried a second time. Tried a third time. Tried a fourth time. Tried a fifth time. Tried a sixth time. Then I did a better job of wiping the sweat off the area around my eye so I could really pull the eye open. Tried a seventh time and, son of a bitch, it went in. I blinked a couple of times, looked up, and I could see. And I figured, might as well keep going.
9-F. Spiked them all, just moving pretty slowly, partly being tired, partly the sore butt. But glad to finish.
Got changed and warmed up. Then Phil came in. He hopped in the car and we headed over to my mom's, about 5 minutes away, a quick visit for me, a hot shower for him. And then off, a stop in Torrington for coffee and bagels (me) or a huge cinnamon roll (him), and then a long talk about families on the way home.
As I said, on balance a fine day. Thanks George and Lyn for making it possible.